Long Beach’s Nate Koch, left, leading a pack of track cyclists, is the headline sprinter for the California Wave of the World Cycling League’s new TeamTrak event at the Velo Sports Center in Carson on Friday and Saturday. (Photo courtesy of KOM Sports Marketing)

Nate Koch becomes the life of the party when he climbs up on his bike, comes out of the saddle and balances himself up on the crossbar.

Organizers of the World Cycling League call it showmanship. The rider from Long Beach says it’s just a matter of when a party favors itself inside a velodrome and cheering from the spectators bounces off the walls and washes over the high-banked track.

He can’t help but feel the good vibrations.

Whatever electricity Koch, his new teammates and his competitors generate for those attending the first-of-its-kind WCL TeamTrak races at the Cal State Dominguez Hills’ Velo Sports Center on Friday and Saturday, it could spark something bigger for a sport that might feel like the unnoticed stepchild of anything related to Tour de France-type stuff.

These team-orientated sprint and endurances races on the wooden boards during three 2-hour-plus sessions are the result of what some future Rio Summer Games competitors are able to channel in a new way.

The fundamental purpose for everyone is having fun.

“If you want to look at it one way, I’ve only got so much time left in my life when I can wear Spandex, ride in circles and try to make a little money,” the 29-year-old Koch (pronounced “Cook”) said before a training run this week.

“So if I’m having fun, I’m going to race better and enjoy it more, and I know the crowd will have a better time too. I enjoy the energy and it’s reciprocated by the fans.”

The intent of WCL TeamTrak is more engagement through fan interaction, giving them more a vested interest specifically through having teams to root for as well as brave-new-sport smartphone access to performance metrics such as a cyclist’s power output, pedaling cadence and heart rate.

World Cycling League CEO and principal developer David Chauner, working with AEG on this inaugural launch, says his plan of taking the best of indoor cycling and world-class riders and adding music, lights and real-time scoring is to make it “a fast-moving program full of color, excitement and displays of power and endurance.”

With that, welcome your California Wave squad, featuring Koch as well as other USA Cycling riders like 26-year-old sprinter Missy Erickson of San Pedro.

The idea is borrowed from races like this that take place in Europe — Koch has competed in an event called the “Berlin 6” that just happened in January, where, as he says, “there are 12,000 people for six days in a row, drinking beer and having a great time. This is something that can capture the attention of the American public just as easily if it’s done right.”

The Velo Sports Center seats about 2,500 but could be expanded to 5,000 with more seating in the infield. The more, the merrier.

Koch has reached this moment in his career by way of a recent past as a Long Beach State decathlete. The Temecula native won the 2008 California community college decathlon while competing at Mt. San Antonio College, leading to a 49ers scholarship. When a series of injuries detrailed his track-and-field pursuits, he remained in Long Beach with his psychology degree (“I took it because it didn’t involve math,” he said) and was quickly drawn toward cycling, a sport that provides fewer ACL issues and torn tendons for him.

Since this WCL has a restriction that requires riders to one specific gear during a race, Koch says he thinks he could have five to six more years of racing sprints.

Koch, whose wife, Ayla, works in the Long Beach State kinesiology department, understands how his disciplined training schedule of four-to-five hours a day for four-to-six days a week kept him “in peak shape with endurance and explosiveness and speed that goes right into cycling. It’s a mass transformation of muscle used, but pushing yourself on a track bike is different than the fluidity of sprinting. You can work through the aches and pains and still have no major injuries.”

Koch enjoys branding himself as “Team Nater” on social media and the Internet — particularly since he’s a one-man team that has generated many followers, people who “own a bike and ride to some degree but may not know much about track cycling, and barely anything about cycling in general.”

It’s hardly a get-rich-quick scheme either for Koch, who pays his bills by working at ERO-Sports as a bike fitter, using motion-capture technology to better adjust riders from recreational use to triathletes to their cycles.

He laughs as he remembers a recent appearance at Hickory Elementary in Torrance when he was asked by a fourth grader about how much he makes.

“That’ must be just the age when you’re looking at a sport because of how much money you can make,” Koch said. “(This weekend) we could split $5,000 among seven riders if our team wins, so making a few hundred bucks isn’t bad. But there will be a day when the sport can offer $50,000 a year to a rider, hopefully more, when it gets up and running as it should be.”

Koch wasn’t even born when the first velodrome was constructed for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. Former gold-medal speed skater Eric Heiden somehow became the U.S. face of the sport, trying to enlighten viewers of what track cycling was all about.

In the decades since, the rebuilt Carson facility remains the only indoor velodrome in the U.S. For this particular WCL TeamTrak event to take hold, it may have to anchor itself in Southern California until it can create a demand for more indoor velodrome construction elsewhere. Otherwise, it could have to move events in Mexico, Great Britain and other European cities, which would hurt grass-roots development here.

Koch admits that USA Cycling organizers have “dropped the ball” in the way of resources for training and cultivating an American program for track cyclists. Only recently has a U.S. women’s team pursuit team won at a world championship.

More USAC time and money has been invested to support American road cyclists — i.e., disgraced riders Lance Armstrong, Floyd Landis, etc.

Interestingly, a new film called “The Program” hits theaters on Friday. The based-on-a-true story drama focuses on journalist David Walsh and his investigation of Armstrong’s doping denials and eventual revelations.

Stories of cycling’s past cast something of a shadow over present-day riders, Koch admits. Having former national track cyclist champion Derek Brouchard-Hall as the new CEO of USA Cycling might affect change.

“Unfortunately, people think cycling and think doping, and that’s going to be a part of us, just like track and field and other sports,” said Koch. “Once you have money and fame and opportunity, there will be a handful of jackasses who try to take advantage. I’m hoping the USAC can change things and make our country a clean powerhouse internationally.”

Perhaps something like this weekend event at the Velo Sports Center can start the sport on a new cycle.

World Cycling League

Event: The inaugural TeamTrak event, consisting of six teams of seven riders each (four male, three female) in 12 events, with each session ranging from a 500-meter sprint (2 laps) to a 12,000-meter endurance/sprint (48 laps)

Teams: The California Wave is one of four representing mainly U.S. riders; teams from Mexico and Ireland are also competing.

Where: Velo Sports Center indoor velodrome, south of the StubHub Center and next to the Cal State Dominguez Hills campus (18400 Avalon Blvd, Carson). Next to Parking Lot 16.

When: Three sessions are Friday (7:30 p.m.) and Saturday (1:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.). Doors open at 6 p.m. for the evening sessions and noon for the afternoon. Awards ceremony follows.

Tickets: From $10-$30 for Saturday afternoon; $15-$35 for evening races

Tom Hoffarth has been with the Daily News/Southern California News Group since 1992 as a general assignment sports reporter, columnist and specialist in the sports media. He has been honored by the Associated Press for sports columnists and honored by the Southern California Sports Broadcasters Association for his career work. His favorite sportscaster of all time: Vin Scully, for professional and personal reasons. He considers watching Zenyatta win the Breeders' Cup 2009 Classic to be the most memorable sporting event he has covered in his career. Go figure that.

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